View source for Reprepro

[http://mirrorer.alioth.debian.org/ reprepro] is a tool to create and manage debian package repositories. This page documents its installation on stage.maemo.org, the Maemo repository server. Note that this is not the tool that maemo.org uses.

''' Preparation '''

Before setting up the repositories, I read that it might be good idea to have a separate partitions for the repositories. From the reprepro man pages: "The most annoying problem not yet worked around is database corruption when the
disk runs out of space. Ideally put the database on another partition to
avoid that." So it seems clear that a large disk is necessary for the package
repositories. 

reprepro has some dependencies, notably Berkeley DB, and it recommends
gnupg-agent and inoticoming. Using inotify and inoticoming to check for
incoming packages is also central to the repo system, it's worth noting that
inoticoming and reprepro are maintained and written by the same person.

So, in short, I've installed these packages and their dependencies on the repository server: reprepro, libdb4.2, and inotincoming.

-- Note: explicitly stating libdb4.2 does not make much sense here. aptitude will get whatever version of that crappy lib reprepro needs just fine.


''' Set up '''

The first step I took was to create directories for the binary deb packages:

    mkdir /srv/extras/
    mkdir /srv/extras-devel/
    mkdir /srv/extras-testing/

Here we're putting the directories under the /srv/ directory so that we can isolate them from the rest of our web content. I have installed nginx to serve the repos because it is small and fast.

-- Note: If you try this at home, it's usually a good idea to only make one repository and the different projects just different distributions within that. (Unless you have a reason against that, of course).


''' Configuration '''

To create a configuration file for reprepro, we need to create a "conf" dir for each of our top level directories. So for diablo extras, we'll have a configuration file called /srv/extras/conf/distributions. We can add a configuration for fremantle extras in the same file since you can have multiple distros per configuration. Here is my distribution file for 'diablo':

 Origin: maemo.org
 Label: Maemo
 Suite: extras
 Codename: diablo
 Version: 0.1
 Architectures: i386 armel source
 Components: free non-free
 Description: Maemo.org package repositories for diablo
 Log: /var/log/repos/  

''' Logging '''

I have tried to make reprepro as verbose as possible, at least to start with. The logs are held in a directory along with the inoticoming logs in /var/log/repos/.


''' Adding packages '''

Now once we have reprepro set up, we can add a package this way:
 sudo reprepro -Vb . includedeb diablo /home/jeremiah/maemo-perl-packages/libv-perl_0.13-1_all.deb

The -b flag tells reprepro where its base dir is, here represented by the current dir (.) but you can export a variable with REPREPRO_BASE_DIR. Those type of directories are all configurable with reprepro and well documented in the man pages.

Here is the output from that command, showing how reprepro created the needed directories and also added a tracking database as well as exported indexes;

 Created directory "./db"
 /home/jeremiah/maemo-perl-packages/libv-perl_0.13-1_all.deb: component guessed  as 'free'
 Created directory "./pool"
 Created directory "./pool/free"
 Created directory "./pool/free/libv"
 Created directory "./pool/free/libv/libv-perl"
 Exporting indices...
 Created directory "./dists"
 Created directory "./dists/diablo"
 Created directory "./dists/diablo/free"
 Created directory "./dists/diablo/free/binary-i386"
 Created directory "./dists/diablo/free/binary-armel"
 Created directory "./dists/diablo/free/source"
 Created directory "./dists/diablo/non-free"
 Created directory "./dists/diablo/non-free/binary-i386"
 Created directory "./dists/diablo/non-free/binary-armel"
 Created directory "./dists/diablo/non-free/source"


''' More information '''

http://wiki.debian.org/HowToSetupADebianRepository<br>
http://alioth.debian.org/scm/viewvc.php/*checkout*/mirrorer/docs/manual.html?revision=HEAD&root=mirrorer<br>
http://www.debian-administration.org/articles/286<br>

[[Category:Software]]